Vir Optimus
by whitchry9
Summary: Carpe Diem series part 13. Sherlock and John go out drinking to celebrate John's wedding. Spoilers for The Sign of Three. Two parts.
1. Chapter 1

John didn't know how he let himself get talked into this.

Oh wait. He did.

It came in the form of a six foot tall detective who had latched onto the idea, and wouldn't let it go.

Yes, it was all coming back to him now.

Sherlock had been a bit... obsessed with the details of John and Mary's wedding, and he wasn't going to miss one thing, simply because it involved drinking, and going out to places that weren't crime scenes.

Sherlock was strangely traditional in that way.

John shook his head in an attempt to clear the thought. He may have been just _slightly _drunk. Buzzed, really. Nothing much.

Sherlock, on the other hand, apparently miscalculated when it came to figuring out his alcohol tolerance.

(Although, John had heard from a reliable source that he had roped a certain Miss Hooper into doing the calculations for him, and she could have... slipping a decimal over or something. Payback could be a bitch.)

Sherlock was sitting on a stool across the table from him, his graduated cylinder more than half finished. And this was the... third pub they were at, which meant Sherlock had ingested... more alcohol than he probably had ever before, which John couldn't be bothered to count, because who cared about maths anyway?

"Drinking lowers the seizure threshold," Sherlock informed John, leaning towards him slightly.

John nodded like it was the most interesting fact he'd ever heard. Sometimes, he swore that Sherlock forgot he was a doctor.

Of course, he was a little drunk as well, and may have forgotten that he was. So how could he fault Sherlock for forgetting, when he so often deleted things?

John frowned. He was thinking too much.

"Well," he drawled. "Don't have a seizure then."

Sherlock giggled. "Okay."

His face turned serious. "Is it working?" he asked.

"Is what working?"

"I'm telling my brain to not have a seizure. Is it working?"

John swatted in Sherlock's direction, but missed enormously. "Yeah, but it doesn't work like that, silly."

Sherlock seemed puzzled by John's statement, but nodded. "Right. You would know. You're a doctor."

"And a soldier," John added, because it seemed like something important.

Sherlock nodded.

They both sat back in their chairs and surveyed the pub they were in. (Sherlock had solved the case of an old man killed by his wife just down the street.)

"Probably shouldn't be in clubs with the flashing lights," John noted.

Sherlock wagged a finger at him. "Ah, but we don't know if I'm photosensitive, because someone wouldn't let me do experiments."

"Damn right," John muttered, taking a gulp out of his graduated cylinder. It was nearly empty. When did that happen?

Sherlock sighed. "And now we'll never know," he added mournfully.

"Shut up," John ordered. "You're not allowed to be sad about missed experiments. As you very loudly pointed out the other day, this night is about me."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but conceded.

"Still don't see why you couldn't have invited Greg along too, maybe Mike. Anyone really."

Sherlock frowned. "Who?"

John waved a hand at him, downing the rest of his beer. "Never mind."

Sherlock looked away, still frowning.

"It's been... I don't even know how many years that you've known him," John said, frowning again at the difficulty of numbers. "And he's told count countless times, and you still can't remember his name. How do you do that? 243 types of tobacco ash, and you can't even remember a four letter name. Or..." he counted on his fingers, "If you wanted to go all out, seven letters. Huh?"

He looked at Sherlock pointedly, but he didn't seem to be paying attention, staring off into the distance, probably deducing someone or something.

"Sherlock," John sighed, waving a hand in front of his face.

Sherlock blinked once, but didn't respond.

"Sherlock," he repeated.

His focus snapped back to John and he glared at him. "What?"

John sighed, giving up on that line of conversation."Perhaps one day you'll remember his name," he finished.

Sherlock only frowned at him, swallowing the last of his beer.

Two pubs later (and John couldn't even remember how many pubs that had been, again with the maths) and they somehow found themselves back at the flat.

Or rather, on their way up to the flat. The stairs posed somewhat of a problem.

Sherlock was muttering about his reputation for... something, when Mrs Hudson discovered them.

They found the energy to get up the stairs after that.

Another half hour later and they found themselves with sticky notes on their heads and drinks in their hands.

John squinted at the note, having forgotten what he put, and giggled again when he remembered.

He thought he was quite clever for having come up with that.

He could only imagine what Sherlock had given him.


	2. Chapter 2

Then it turned out Sherlock didn't even know who John was, and then there was a client, and maybe some falling asleep, since it was all rather dull. John couldn't even remember her name. She had a name. It was probably something short.

Then there was something about a ghost, and then they ended up at a flat, looking for clues.

Or maybe it was clueing for looks. John thinks that was the one that he said out loud. It wasn't just numbers that were misbehaving, it was words as well. (He blamed Sherlock. Because he could.)

Then Sherlock, being the lightweight he was, threw up all over the floor, leading the land lord to call the police, despite Sherlock's insistence that they would compromise the...

"Crime scene," John supplied.

"That," Sherlock confirmed.

The man didn't listen, and so they got a free ride to the station.

John would have preferred if they'd just driven them back to the flat, where their sticky notes were surely waiting for them to finish their game, but apparently that wasn't proper procedure or something.

John wasn't really listening, in between falling asleep, and pushing Sherlock's sleeping head off of his shoulder.

Frankly, he was surprised Lestrade hadn't shown up. From stories he'd heard from Sherlock, it sometimes seemed that he was the only man on the force.

They stuck them in a cell together that had only one bed.

"I'm getting married," John told them. "I'm not gay."

But no one seemed to listen. Like always. (Probably didn't help that he was swaying, and had to hold onto Sherlock for support, like he did any good, the lanky beanpole.)

"You keep saying that," Sherlock noted, face mashed into the concrete slab that was supposed to pass as a bed. It had a thin foam cover on it, not that Sherlock was choosing to use it. He was a little drunk.

"And they keep not listening," John replied, pressing his palms against his eyes.

"I wonder why that is," Sherlock muttered.

John glared at him, but Sherlock's eyes were closed. "I wouldn't know."

"No," Sherlock agreed. "You wouldn't. You know... soooo little," he sighed, rolling over. "You could be sending out subconscious signals... You're not even aware of them but..." he continued in a sing song voice, "everyone else is!"

"I'm not gay," John repeated.

Sherlock huffed. "You know that's not the only option, right? Sure... You can be straight. Heterosexual. Homosexual. Bisexual. And that's just sexual attraction," he continued, muttering into the wall, "Then there's heteroromantic... homoromantic... biromantic... aromantic. Oh, I missed asexual. Demisexual... demiromantic... is that a thing? I'm sure it's a thing... Screw labels... boxes..." he slurred.

"Shut up Sherlock," John sighed. "I get it."

"Doubt it," he mumbled. "Like my mother... you understand very little." He chuckled.

"Go to sleep," he told Sherlock.

"Mother..." Sherlock sighed.

He was silent for a minute before rolling over to face John.

"Is this what normal people feel like _all the time?_"

John shrugged, his eyes drifting shut. "S'pose."

Sherlock groaned. "I think I hate drinking," he said flatly, staring off into space.

John blinked at him. "I'm not surprised," he sighed.

Sherlock didn't reply, just kept blinking.

"Y'alright Sherlock?" John asked wearily.

There was no reply.

"Are you sleeping with your eyes open again? Because we talked about that..."

John trailed off as he saw the first tremor start in his arm. He sat frozen for a second, hoping it was something else, like his double vision, or Sherlock being uncoordinated because of his blood alcohol level.

It wasn't meant to be, because the tremor spread into stiffness, then his entire body jerking in a seizure.

"I need help in here!" he shouted, nearly falling over as he got to his feet to be at Sherlock's side.

A concrete bed was pretty much the worst place to have a seizure, since the foam provided roughly zero padding. Or maybe one. Was there such thing as one padding? Was it out of a hundred?

John wished his brain would shut up and focus on Sherlock.

There was no way to get him on the ground now, and it wouldn't help much, since it wasn't padded, but at least there Sherlock wouldn't risk hitting his arms on the wall.

John positioned his leg between Sherlock's arm and the wall, resting his head somewhat in his lap, or at least the best he could when the larger man was flailing about. For someone so skinny, he was remarkably strong, especially when his muscles weren't under conscious control and worried about being hurt.

"I told you we should have brought Gladstone," he told Sherlock, who definitely wasn't listening as he seized in John's arms.

Gladstone had been left in the flat, a decision that Sherlock had pondered for weeks, the argument for leaving her home finally winning, much to everyone else's chagrin.

John couldn't deny that she would have been miserable in the pubs, but at least there would have been some warning, so Sherlock wouldn't have been having a seizure in the small, very solid cell.

She'd popped up to see them when they returned to the flat, but they left her with Mrs Hudson when they went on their case, neither of them in a state to take care of themselves, much less a dog.

She would have been useful, but there was nothing John could do about that now.

John attempted to time Sherlock, but the difficulty with numbers was still present, and had his watch always been that _small? _It didn't seem any longer than usual, so John didn't worry too much. He was more annoyed that no one came to his call for help. Sure, drunks were known to be loud, but yelling for help was something that shouldn't be ignored.

"You're a little late," John informed the man who arrived just as Sherlock finished seizing. "He just had a seizure."

The man sighed. "Do you need an ambulance?"

John frowned. "No. But a pillow would have been nice before he gave himself a concussion," he added loudly.

The man grimaced, but left without saying anything else.

John sighed. He would be having a word with Mycroft in the morning, provided he could remember this.

Hell, Mycroft might know before he did.

John lifted limbs off of his lap and extracted himself out from underneath Sherlock.

So much for the whole not gay thing. It just wasn't meant to be.

He sighed, and positioned Sherlock on his side, in case he threw up again.

John knew he probably wouldn't stay like that, since Sherlock was a restless sleeper at the best of times, but hey, who knew what would happen when he was drunk.

John slouched on the floor, head in his hand, completely ready to fall asleep sitting up. What a night.

They probably wouldn't remember it in the morning, any lingering seizure effects masked by the hangover.

John was a little grateful for that, since Sherlock would feel bad about having ruined John's night, when in actuality, it was so far down the list there wasn't any point in mentioning it.

So he wouldn't.

No need to get his best man worked up.

His best friend.

John smiled at him. He almost looked peaceful as he slept.

What a best man indeed.

* * *

><p><strong>AN- As always, the title is Latin. This one means 'best man', which I thought was fitting. :)<strong>


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